Thursday Update

After yet another day of waiting on tests (yesterday), today the decision was made to move forward with standard chemotherapy treatment.

The results from the bone marrow biopsy were released yesterday and the doctors had quite the conference to discuss treatment. Dad's version of AML involves / is called Complex Karyotype. I've had a hard time finding material on what this means, exactly, but the doctors made it clear that it's not particularly good and indicates a very aggressive leukemia. There are many subtypes of AML and they are numbered. When I asked for a number the doctor said this didn't fall into one, and that the Complex Karyotype is the important factor in the marrow results. (Some other aspects of the biospy were good - like being FLT3 negative - but the Complex Karyotype is the overriding factor in treatment decisions.)

Yesterday during their conference, the doctors decided that the best course of treatment would be to get dad into the trial, and we knew they wanted to do this since they kept delaying the start of any treatment in the hopes that dad's lab results would improve enough for him to qualify. While his liver function did make the threshold for trial today, some other results actually worsened. So, earlier today the doctor made the call that she doesn't want to wait any longer to start traditional (non-drug trial) AML chemotherapy treatment.

Dad - and some family in the room - got the run down on chemotherapy protocol and they are prepping dad to start chemotherapy today. I will update the chemo schedule on the right after I find out what it is.

And, in case you're wondering, dad does look at the blog so PLEASE leave comments and your words of encouragement. I know he'd love to read them.